Last edited Tue Apr 26, 2016, 01:39 PM - Edit history (1)

our preconceived notions of our intellect shroud the possibility that other species have any or equivalent intellect... I grew up with people referring to anything not human as "dumb animals" to which I took offense. We never seem to consider that animals could be intelligent except in anecdotal terms.

I would wager that most members of the animal kingdom are more intelligent than we humans.

They can't do as much as we can, but evolution provides; what they do, they do extremely fast and well.

And far more creatures than we thought have the spare processing power to wonder, dream, and play, etc.

Zoos make me uncomfortable. I'm no longer satisfied those animals don't know they are in prison.

that our value system is oriented toward the "humans are superior and, therefore, the alleged stewards of the natural world" and it is really only self-serving.

I am certain that the species in our biosphere do far more than we do, evolution or no. Humans contribute nothing to the health of the biosphere and what we do more of is destroy. Our species is the only one that makes no positive contribution, otherwise, every living thing in the natural world has a purposeful role in maintaining a natural balance whether we accept it or not.

I suspect we humans came here to destroy the biosphere and then move on to the next planet to trash.

Feet-on-the-ground mammals can carry a little extra weight, and with enough food a larger size and weight can be advantageous. Nobody messes with a grizzly bear.

He has trained this crow! Guess it would have to be a smart bird in order to be trained!

We need more corvid-related posts on DU.

that it is not the volume or weight of a brain but the surface area that is indicative of intelligence. For example, women's brains are smaller, but they are more deeply folded, and on tests of general intelligence we do equally as well as men.

I truly love them.

Ever read RAVENS IN WINTER by Bernd Heinrich? Terrific book.

Mind of the Raven is a good read too.

Professor Marzluff at the University of Washington has been studying them for several years. Here's a talk he gave. (It's long, but well worth it!)

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Lucky me.

"Despite their small brains, Republicans are just as clever as Democrats"

I live in a rural area and have a tiny guest house - if the guest house door gets left open, the ravens go inside. Ravens especially love mirrors and they slime them all up looking at themselves. They can really trash a room fast - they get into everything.

The ravens are attracted by the water in my fish pond as I live in the high desert. In the summer I will sometimes have 50 ravens in my yard all cawing at the same time. I love it when they walk around like little penguins.

I have a 1200 gallon holding tank for my well water and a raven turned on the faucet by standing on it in front of the mirror and drained my entire water holding tank 3 times. I now am very careful about not leaving doors open. I hear one cawing as I'm typing this.

except for the pond. I will put some mirrors out for them and see what happens. I could spend hours watching them, I especially love the 'grandparent' ravens--they gallop with a weird little dance thrown in!!!!

?1

.... hang them from trees (but low enough so we could reach them) and he/she would watch as
we put them back on the table and I am almost sure the bird was laughing at us ..... he/she
would take the same lure back to the same tree everytime we left camp to go fish.

I miss those days ..... note to self ..... go back to Canada.

sorry for the commercials at the beginning....

mourn their dead by forming a circle around it and standing in silence, make tools when they need them and get high by rolling in anthills to be bitten then roll to get rid of them. The ants' bites have a chemical that makes the ravens high. They also make swings out of barbed wire and love to play.

They LOVE roasted unsalted peanuts and eggs.

At the start of the video, the cats were already eyeing one another and probably growling. And when the cats actually started fighting, the crows seemed agitated and continued all the harder to try to pull the cats' tails. If they had wanted the cats to fight, I think they would have simply sat back and enjoyed the show. Pure speculation on my part, but I suspect the crows had seen these two cats fight before.

Incidentally, in case anyone's wondering, the gray feathers on these birds indicate they're hooded crows, probably somewhere in Russia (based on the Cyrillic notes provided by the uploader).

It seems like they could fly off with the squirrel in their talons, but they tend to defer.

Of course, they are smart, as the OP notes.

My cat, on the other hand, still chases squirrels.